When we think too much about the opinions of others, we are letting them edit a book God has written.

If you buy the website, maybe you'll do something with it. But so far I haven't; we'll see.

If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another.

I think writers can get a little melodramatic sometimes about their work, and it helps me not to do that, to just say, "Well, this is how I make a living, and I need to become a very good craftsman."

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.

Meaningful stories have lots and lots of conflict. If we avoid conflict, our stories won't be meaningful.

...she wanted God to make sense. He doesn't. He will make no more sense to me than I will make sense to an ant.